By Daniel Caerwyn

The Anatomy of Coercive Control

A Toolkit for Survivors to Understand High Control Breenism

Investigation: Mike Breen

This article discusses coercive and abusive behaviours in faith spaces, which some readers may find distressing. Take breaks if needed and seek support if you recognise these patterns.

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Introduction

High-control church systems don’t announce themselves. They are built methodically with recognizable techniques that operate beneath the language of discipleship, mission, and community. These systems work by redirecting a person’s source of imitation from Christ to a human leader, creating dependency while maintaining an appearance of biblical faithfulness.

The primary danger is that these mechanisms persist long after their original branding has been rejected, renamed, or forgotten. Many leaders trained in this methodology have since “moved on”, rejecting the geometric shapes while retaining the underlying techniques. Others have never heard of Breen but learned these methods second-hand from books, conferences, or mentors who absorbed them without attribution.

This toolkit, therefore, applies whether or not you recognise the name “Breen”. The techniques persist because they are effective at consolidating authority, filtering for compliance, and creating devoted followers. Many leaders employing these methods may do so unconsciously, genuinely believing they are facilitating healthy discipleship. The danger lies not in the terminology but in the relational patterns and power dynamics the techniques create.

By explaining how these techniques function - their justifications, mechanisms, and effects - this guide provides the vocabulary to recognise and respond to coercive dynamics. It is a companion piece to the in-depth investigation, “Mike Breen: The Architect of Coercive Control,” and the “Language of Breenism: A Critical Glossary.”

All of these techniques, whether branded or not, ultimately serve to build and protect one central operating system.

The Discipleship Substitute

At the centre of these systems is a fundamental redirection. Discipleship, which should orient a person toward Christ, is subtly shifted to orient them toward a human leader. The leader’s interpretation becomes authoritative. Their methods become mandatory. Their approval becomes the measure of spiritual maturity. This “man-in-the-middle” dynamic intercepts the direct relationship between an individual and God.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer warns that any “cult of personality that emphasises the distinguished qualities, virtues, and talents of another person, even if spiritual in nature, is worldly and has no place in the Christian community; indeed, it poisons it”. At the centre of the systems described in this toolkit is a fundamental redirection that brings this warning to life.

This is the operating system all other techniques serve to build and protect.

Breenism refers to the discipleship system designed and exported by Mike Breen, the organisation 3DM, and the Anglican Mission Order “The Order of Mission,” from the late 1990s onward. It is characterised by:

  • Lifeshapes: a suite of geometric diagrams (circle, semicircle, square, triangle, etc.) presented as universal tools for Christian life and leadership.
  • Invitation and Challenge: a repeated relational framing where followers are alternately affirmed (“invitation”) and pressured to change (“challenge”), often structured around leader–disciple dynamics.
  • Obedience Structures: a strong emphasis on submission to human leaders, framed as discipleship, which can blur boundaries between spiritual formation and authoritarian control.
  • Multiplication Model: a franchised approach to church growth that treats discipling relationships as scalable units, privileging replication over local discernment.

The term is used here to distinguish this system sharply from wider traditions of Christian discipleship, especially the Christ-centred vision articulated by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together. Whereas Bonhoeffer placed obedience in direct relationship to Christ, Breenism redirects obedience through a codified methodology and hierarchical chain of command.

How It’s Built: The Three Phases

These environments develop systematically through three operational phases. Understanding this progression reveals how an initially appealing community evolves into a closed, controlling system.

Section 1

Recruitment & Filtering

details the methods used to select a compliant inner circle.

Section 2

Indoctrination & Control

explains the processes that create deep ideological and emotional dependency.

Section 3

Defending the System

reveals the mechanisms that protect the group from internal dissent and external criticism.

Using This Toolkit

Each technique is analysed through a consistent framework: how it’s justified, how it functions, what it produces, and how to recognise it. The goal is to help you recognise patterns—to understand the architecture of control so you can identify, name, and respond to it with clarity.

This toolkit is a diagnostic instrument. By seeing the mechanics clearly, we can distinguish between genuine spiritual community and systems that consolidate power around a leader.

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Section 1: Recruitment and Filtering

For a high-control system to remain stable, it must first form a compliant inner circle. This initial stage functions primarily to sort followers, not just attract them. The result is a foundational group receptive to the system’s logic, creating the necessary conditions to introduce more intensive control structures.

The techniques in this section—primarily Congregation Filters (which work as compliance gates or tests) and Boundary Erosion —are sophisticated sorting mechanisms. The process elevates individuals who show a high capacity for submission while systematically filtering out those with strong critical thinking skills, independent discernment, or healthy personal boundaries.

The entire system’s stability hinges on how effectively it filters people at this stage. When the community’s core consists of individuals filtered for compliance, they become more receptive to the intensive techniques of indoctrination and control that follow. This stage produces an echo chamber where the system’s premises can operate without challenge.

Understanding how these gates and tests operate is the first step in deconstructing how such a homogenous, high-control environment forms.

Recruitment and Filtering

Congregation Filters

Square Huddle Person of Peace

Strategic Function: Selects a compliant inner circle by systematically filtering out critical thinkers and independent voices. This sorting mechanism ensures the system’s core is composed of individuals unlikely to challenge the leader’s authority, creating the necessary conditions for more intensive control.

Definition

Congregation Filters (or ‘Compliance Gates’) are mechanisms, often disguised as spiritual discernment or biblical wisdom, that systematically control access to a community’s inner circles. They primarily determine who is “in” by filtering for individuals who demonstrate compliance and submission to the leader or system. This selection process fundamentally shapes the group’s dynamics, as it intentionally weeds out those with strong critical thinking skills or independent discernment, ensuring the inner core of the community is composed of those least likely to challenge the status quo.

These Compliance Gates are often enforced through a series of implicit or explicit Compliance Tests . These tests evaluate a person’s loyalty and submission, often disguised as discipleship or spiritual training. Passing them grants deeper access; failing them (e.g., by asking too many questions) means being held back or filtered out.

A Closely Related Concept: The Optics Gate

While Compliance Gates filter people based on their submission, a similar mechanism—the Optics Gate—filters them based on superficial characteristics. Access is granted based on traits that enhance the group’s image, such as:

🦋 Appearance and attractiveness

🪙 Wealth and social status

🧑‍⚕️ Professional success or impressive credentials

🎉 A large social media following

Both are gatekeeping techniques used to build a curated inner circle, but they prioritise different qualities. Compliance Gates prioritise control and loyalty; Optics Gates prioritise image and social proof. A system may use one, the other, or both to shape its community.

May operate implicitly through culture or explicitly through stated policies.

Leaders typically present these barriers as biblical discernment, often citing:

  • “Person of Peace” Strategy: Claiming Jesus instructed followers to find receptive people rather than “waste time” on questioners.
  • Spiritual Maturity Requirements: Arguing that only those who’ve “been through the process” are qualified to offer input or hold opinions.
  • Jesus’s Inner Circle: Using Christ’s relationship with the twelve disciples to justify creating permanent access tiers within modern churches.
  • Efficiency Claims: Presenting filtering as practical wisdom—focusing energy on “committed” people rather than “time-wasters.”

The justification sounds reasonable because it contains elements of genuine wisdom about pastoral priorities, but applies these principles in manipulative ways.

⚙️ The Underlying Mechanism

This hidden process sorts and controls people.

  • 🔑 Establishes the Gatekeeper: The leader or system positions itself as the sole authority on who is “in” and who is “out,” controlling access to community and spiritual growth.
  • ⚖️ Rewards & Punishes: The system rewards compliance with access and praise, while punishing independence and questions with exclusion.
  • 🚫 Filters for Control: The process intentionally pushes away individuals with strong boundaries and critical thinking skills because they challenge the system’s control.
  • 🎟️ Creates Artificial Scarcity: The system turns belonging and spiritual “advancement” into limited resources that people must compete for, increasing the pressure to conform.

🌪️ The Ripple Effect

These mechanisms cause predictable and damaging consequences for individuals and the community.

  • 📉 The Community Weakens: Mature, discerning members leave, while more vulnerable individuals may be retained, stunting the group’s overall health.
  • 🎯 Insiders vs. Outsiders: A two-tier system emerges that breeds resentment, division, and gossip.
  • 💔 People Compromise Themselves: To maintain their standing, individuals feel pressured to silence their concerns or compromise their personal values.
  • 🔄 Long-Term Members Get Displaced: Loyal members often feel pushed aside by newer participants who are more compliant with the leader.
  • 👥 The Group Becomes an Echo Chamber: The community loses diversity in thought and personality, becoming increasingly homogeneous.
Population Movement Church

In Leadership Behaviour:

  • Access to programmes, leadership roles, or information is restricted to specific groups.
  • Questions or concerns are dismissed as “resistance” or a lack of “kingdom vision.”
  • People are treated differently based on compliance rather than genuine need.
  • Language about “people of peace” is used to justify excluding thoughtful questioners.
  • Inner circles operate with secrecy or special privileges.

In Community Culture:

  • Pressure to prove commitment through specific actions or participation.
  • Fear of asking questions because of potential exclusion.
  • Stories are shared about people who “left because they weren’t ready.”
  • An emphasis on being “chosen” or “called” to participate.
  • Regular references to who is “in” versus “out.”

If You’re Being Filtered Out:

  • Confusion about why your legitimate questions aren’t welcomed.
  • Feeling like you’re missing something spiritually that others possess.
  • Pressure to conform or perform to gain acceptance.
  • A sense that your spiritual maturity is being questioned for having boundaries.

If You’re Being Let In:

  • Relief and gratitude that can feel disproportionate to the situation.
  • Pride in being “chosen” combined with anxiety about maintaining status.
  • Pressure to defend the system against outsiders’ concerns.
  • Growing discomfort with how others are treated, but fear of losing your position.
  • Clinical Terms: In-group/out-group dynamics, conditional acceptance, social filtering
  • Cult Research: Filtering mechanisms, compliance testing, progressive commitment
  • Survivor Language: “Earning your place,” “proving yourself,” “inner circle politics,” “spiritual gatekeeping”

From Breen’s System:

  • The Four-Stage Square: Only those who’ve endured the “pit of despair” (D2) have opinions “worth considering.”
  • Person of Peace Strategy: Questioners are labeled as “not people of peace” and excluded from further engagement.
  • Invitation-Only Huddles: Access is controlled entirely by leaders with no transparent criteria.

Common Variations:

  • Ministry positions are restricted to programme participants.
  • Information is shared privately with “committed” members only.
  • Special meetings or retreats are held for “mature” believers.
  • Deeper involvement requires financial contributions.

What Genuine Spiritual Community Looks Like:

  • Questions are welcomed and addressed thoughtfully, even when challenging.
  • Access is based on genuine spiritual need rather than compliance.
  • Criteria for leadership roles and spiritual responsibilities are transparent.
  • There are multiple pathways for growth and involvement that respect different personalities and backgrounds.
  • Decisions are made through collaborative discernment rather than leader preference.

Biblical Examples:

  • Jesus’s patient responses to skeptics like Thomas and Nicodemus.
  • Paul’s detailed explanations of controversial teachings rather than dismissing questions.
  • The early church’s practices of open dialogue and communal decision-making.

If You’re Currently Experiencing This:

  • Trust your instincts—legitimate spiritual communities welcome sincere questions.
  • Seek perspective from mature believers outside the organisation.
  • Document concerning patterns you observe.
  • Maintain relationships and support systems outside the group.
  • Remember that authentic spiritual growth doesn’t require earning access through compliance.

If You’ve Left a System Like This:

  • recognise that your questions and concerns were likely valid, not a sign of spiritual deficiency.
  • Understand that being “filtered out” may have protected you from deeper manipulation.
  • Process the grief of lost community while affirming your healthy boundaries.
  • Seek counseling if needed to rebuild confidence in your spiritual discernment.

Supporting Others:

  • Listen without immediately trying to “fix” their situation.
  • Help them identify their own values and boundaries.
  • Provide alternative community experiences that demonstrate healthy spiritual relationships.
  • Avoid pressuring them to leave—focus on empowering their own decision-making.

Recruitment and Filtering

Boundary Erosion

Family On Mission Huddle

Strategic Function: Functions as a high-stakes loyalty test, filtering followers for their willingness to surrender personal autonomy. By reframing total enmeshment as spiritual commitment, this technique selects for a compliant inner circle and creates a dependent, servant class around the leader.

Definition

A process where a leader or system intentionally dissolves the separation between their private, personal life and the lives of their followers. Healthy boundaries are systematically pathologised as a sign of spiritual exhaustion or a lack of commitment, while total enmeshment is presented as the only path to a truly integrated and thriving spiritual life.

This technique functions as a primary Compliance Gate. A follower’s willingness to allow their personal boundaries to be eroded—by performing unpaid domestic labor for the leader, integrating their social life into the leader’s home, or even relocating their family—becomes the ultimate test of loyalty. Passing this test grants access to the inner circle; maintaining healthy, personal boundaries results in being filtered out.

Leaders justify this complete merging of lives as a liberating solution to the burnout many people feel. This is achieved by creating a false choice between the leader’s model and an “unsustainable” life.

  • Framing Boundaries as the Problem: A life with clear boundaries between family and ministry is described as an “utterly exhausting way to function” and ultimately “unsustainable”. This presents a healthy practice as a spiritual and emotional liability.
  • Presenting Enmeshment as Liberation: The dissolution of boundaries is framed as a spiritual breakthrough. The experience is described with the words, “we forgot to manage margins, and our boundaries were technically ‘broken,’ but we were thriving in a way we hadn’t experienced before”.
  • Claiming It’s the Only Way That “Works”: The model is presented as the only effective way to live out a spiritual calling, with the claim that “discipleship and mission never really work unless we are able to create the texture of family on mission”. This pressures followers to accept the leader’s terms or feel spiritually ineffective.
How Family On Mission describes the three levels of commitment:
  • 🥉 Friends: “people who know who Jesus is and are friendly toward him… They are also happy to serve him when they can”.
  • 🥈 Followers: “followers submit their skills and resources to someone else’s mission”.
  • 🥇 Family: “family are those who surrender completely, laying down their agenda fully for the agenda of Jesus”.

⚙️ The Underlying Mechanism

The leader systematically absorbs the time, energy, and personal lives of followers into their own orbit under the guise of “mission”. This progression from service to surrender is the core of the abusive dynamic.

  • 🔑 Leader’s Needs Become Missional Tasks: The process begins by inviting followers into the leader’s life “to help us”. Personal, domestic, and administrative tasks are reframed as opportunities for discipleship and service.
  • 🏡 The Leader’s Home Becomes the Hub: Followers are absorbed into the leader’s household activities, such as “grocery shopping and folding laundry,” helping with homework, and babysitting. The leader’s private space becomes the default centre of the community.
  • 🤝 Service Escalates to Surrender: Over time, the level of expected commitment grows. True inclusion requires followers to be “simply with us in all of life”, which can escalate to followers leaving their jobs and communities to physically relocate with the leader.
  • 🚫 Filters for Unquestioning Availability: The model naturally selects for individuals with fewer pre-existing commitments, such as “young adults”, who are able to offer the high level of availability and unpaid service required.

🌪️ The Ripple Effect

This dynamic creates a dependent, servant class around the leader and excludes those who cannot or will not participate at this level of enmeshment.

  • 💔 Total Enmeshment and Loss of Self: For those in the inner circle, personal identity, time, and goals become subsumed by the leader’s agenda. It becomes difficult to distinguish one’s own life from the life of the group and its leader.
  • 🎯 Creates a Two-Tier System: An unspoken hierarchy forms between the “in” group, who demonstrate their loyalty through constant service and presence, and the “out” group, whose life circumstances prevent this level of enmeshment.
  • 📉 Burnout and Exploitation: While promising a solution to exhaustion, the demand for constant availability and service to the leader’s personal and professional needs can lead to severe burnout and emotional exploitation among followers.
  • 🚪 Inability to Leave: When a follower’s entire social structure, “family,” and daily routine are enmeshed with the leader’s, leaving the group can mean losing everything, making exit incredibly difficult and psychologically damaging.

In Leadership Behaviour:

  • Regularly framing the leader’s personal or domestic needs as discipleship opportunities.
  • An expectation that followers will prioritise the leader’s family events and needs over their own.
  • A pattern of recruiting followers for unpaid labor (childcare, administration, household chores) under the guise of “mission”.
  • Celebrating followers who move or change jobs to be closer to the leader and the community’s hub.

In Community Culture:

  • A high social value is placed on time spent in the leader’s home.
  • The inner circle is visibly composed of people who serve the leader’s family in practical ways.
  • Stories are told that valorize sacrificing personal time, family, and careers to serve the group’s mission.
  • A general sense that one can never do enough to be considered truly “committed”.

If You’re Being Let In:

  • A feeling of being special, chosen, and trusted with the intimate details of the leader’s life.
  • A sense of profound belonging in a new “family” that feels more real and purposeful than any other community.
  • Growing exhaustion and the feeling that you no longer have a life of your own.
  • Guilt or anxiety when you need to say “no” or take time for yourself.

If You’re Being Filtered Out:

  • Feeling inadequate or unspiritual because your life circumstances don’t allow for constant availability.
  • Confusion as to why you aren’t being invited deeper, despite your desire for community.
  • A sense that you are failing at the “real” version of discipleship that others seem to be living.
  • Clinical Terms: Enmeshment, codependency, porous boundaries, parentification (of followers).
  • Survivor Language: “Living in their pocket,” “the home help team,” “total commitment culture,” “serving the vision”.

From Breen’s System:

  • The explicit move from “managing boundaries” to having them be “technically ‘broken’” by inviting followers into all aspects of life.
  • The practice of having young adult followers assist with domestic chores like “grocery shopping and folding laundry” and providing childcare.
  • The pattern of followers relocating to be with the leader, described in the moves to Phoenix and later to Pawleys Island.

The Nine O’Clock Service: A more totalising example from Sheffield in the 1980s and 90s illustrates how the dynamic of boundary erosion can escalate into a system of severe abuse.

  • Initial Stage (Boundary Erosion): The leader, Chris Brain, recruited a team of followers (mostly young women) for unpaid domestic help, such as “cooking, shopping, [and] cleaning,” framing it as necessary support for his mission.
  • Filtering & Isolation: Being on the “Homebase Team” became a high-status position. Members were removed from other church groups and isolated from outside friends, increasing their dependence on Brain. A potential member who resisted Brain’s physical advances was dropped because her “boundaries were too pronounced,” a clear example of the technique acting as a compliance filter.
  • Escalation to Severe Abuse: Over time, the expected “service” escalated to include systematic sexual contact, which Brain justified as a form of “sexual healing” to help members achieve “wholeness”. This was combined with intense psychological abuse, where members were subjected to hours-long verbal attacks, leading to a complete “loss of self”.

This case serves as a stark warning: the seemingly benign expectation that followers should service a leader’s private life can create the conditions for total control and extreme harm.

What Genuine Spiritual Community Looks Like:

  • Leaders model and respect healthy boundaries, having their own private family life and personal support systems.
  • There are clear distinctions between ministry responsibilities, friendship, and personal life.
  • Community participation is flexible, honouring the different life stages, careers, and family commitments of its members.
  • Care is mutual and flows in all directions, rather than being primarily directed toward serving the needs of the leader.
  • Leaders empower followers to build their own healthy, autonomous lives, rather than absorbing them into their own.

If You’re Currently Experiencing This:

  • Begin to re-establish small, private boundaries. Carve out time or activities that are not shared with the group.
  • Seek friendships and community outside the system to gain perspective and build an independent support network.
  • Practice saying “no” to small requests to build your confidence.
  • Remember that your spiritual worth is not measured by your level of service or availability to a leader.

If You’ve Left a System Like This:

  • Acknowledge that the loss of community can feel like a painful divorce, and give yourself time to grieve.
  • Relearn what healthy relationships with mutual respect and appropriate boundaries look like. This may require help from a therapist.
  • recognise that the exhaustion and loss of self you experienced were valid responses to an enmeshed, exploitative system.

Supporting Others:

  • Affirm their right to a private life and personal space.
  • Listen without judgement , validating the confusion of feeling both special and exploited.
  • Invite them into low-demand social situations that have no agenda.
  • Help them reconnect with their own personal goals, hobbies, and relationships that were sidelined.

Recruitment and Filtering

Leadership Bypass

Huddle Narrative Control

Strategic Objective: To neutralise a church’s official, elected governing body by creating a parallel, hand-picked power structure that supplants its authority. This structural change eliminates meaningful oversight and makes it extremely difficult for the congregation to hold the leader accountable through established channels.

Definition

A process where a leader establishes an informal, invitation-only leadership body (e.g., “Co-Leaders,” “Huddle Leaders”) that operates parallel to and ultimately supplants the church’s official, legally constituted governing body (e.g., a Parochial Church Council (PCC) or Elder Board).

This technique does not happen in a vacuum. It is often the capstone of a longer process of centralising control that is not always obvious to the congregation as it unfolds. Typically, an invitation-only discipleship system (like a Huddle) is introduced first. This system filters the congregation for compliance, identifies loyalists, and creates unofficial ‘in’ and ‘out’ groups. The Leadership Bypass then formalises this informal power dynamic, elevating the leader’s hand-picked followers above the church’s elected representatives and locking in a centralised, high-control approach to leadership.

This move is a moment of profound risk because it systematically disarms a congregation’s ability to provide oversight or push back against the leader’s agenda.

  • It Formalises the ‘In-Group’: The informal “inner circle” created through Huddles now becomes the de facto government. Their power is no longer just relational; it is structural.

  • Asymmetric Information: Church leaders and huddle leaders likely already have a shared understanding of these systems. When presented to a church board, they may not have had full opportunity to understand the system in full before approving.

  • It Makes Dissent Illegitimate: Once the “real” leadership is the hand-picked team, any challenge or critique from the official (now sidelined) board can be easily framed as unspiritual, bureaucratic, or an attempt to “hinder the mission.”

  • It Neutralises Effective Accountability: The leader replaces independent oversight with a closed loop of loyalty. They are not truly accountable to their hand-picked inner circle; rather, that circle is accountable to them. This creates an echo chamber where the leader’s decisions are affirmed, not challenged, by people who owe their position to him. While external accountability (such as to a bishop) may still exist on paper, this internal bypass makes it far less effective. The elected board is the congregation’s first line of defence and the body that would normally raise official concerns. By silencing them, the leader can control the information flowing to the denomination, making it much harder for external supervisors to see the true state of affairs until a crisis erupts.

  • The Congregation Loses Its Voice: A congregation’s primary tool for governance (electing representatives to a board) becomes meaningless. The people they elected are now systematically ignored, leaving the congregation with no effective channel to express concern or influence direction.

Leaders justify creating this parallel structure by framing the official, elected body as inefficient and inadequate for the “real” work of the ministry.

  • The Efficiency Argument: The official body is framed as too slow and bureaucratic for the demands of modern ministry. For example, a PCC that meets every two months is described as “clearly inadequate when considering the nature of church leadership”.

  • The Biblical Argument: The new structure is presented as a more biblical model of plural leadership, imitating Jesus’s personal selection of his inner circle. The leader may state they have “personally and prayerfully selected these people (as Jesus selected The Twelve)”.

  • The Relational Argument: The new group is described as a team of “friends” with whom the leader can relate well, making it easier to “receive support and challenge”.

  • It’s Not a Takeover, It’s a both/and: The leader will publicly affirm the legal authority of the official body to quell concerns, while privately shifting all real power away from it. They may state that “PCC are the ultimate decision-makers” even as they create a structure that bypasses them.

⚙️ The Underlying Mechanism

This describes the hidden process designed to sideline elected governance and centralise control.

  • Discredit & Demote: The existing structure’s role is reframed as being primarily for practical and administrative tasks rather than working together to create the vision.
  • Appoint & Indoctrinate an Inner Circle: The leader hand-picks a loyal inner circle through an invitation-only vehicle like a Huddle, explicitly filtering out critical voices. It is only within this private group that the full “discipling system” and its proprietary language (e.g., LifeShapes) are taught. This creates a critical asymmetry of knowledge, which is the central evidence of the hidden coup:
    • The Inner Circle understands the complete system, its goals, and its implications for church structure and power. They know what it all actually means.
    • The Official Board and Congregation see only fragmented pieces, often framed as simple “discipleship training,” without understanding the full blueprint. This exclusivity is maintained by explicit advice not to teach the system publicly, thereby preventing wider scrutiny and ensuring that only the compliant inner circle is privy to the true agenda.
  • Bypass & Supplant: Real decision-making and strategic planning are moved into the frequent meetings of the new, informal group. The official board meetings become rubber-stamping sessions for decisions that have already been made.
  • Reroute Accountability: The new group is made “directly accountable to myself” replacing horizontal accountability to an elected board with a closed loop of loyalty to the leader.

🌪️ The Ripple Effect

This structural alterations have predictable and damaging consequences for the health of the church.

  • Day to Day Accountability: The leader is effectively accountable only to a group of people they personally selected for their loyalty, eliminating any meaningful, independent oversight.
  • The Congregation is Disenfranchised: The power of the church’s elected representatives is neutralised, silencing the voice of the congregation they are supposed to represent.
  • An Elite In-Group is Formed: A two-tier system of leadership is created. Access to the leader and to real influence depends on being “chosen” for a Huddle, not elected by the community.
  • The Legal Structure Becomes a Shell: The church’s official governing body is maintained for legal and financial purposes, but it is stripped of its primary spiritual and directional authority, becoming a hollowed-out administrative committee.

It is important to note that many healthy churches have leadership or vision teams that advise the primary governing body. The distinction between a healthy advisory group and a “Leadership Bypass” is found in how power, accountability, and information are handled. The following signs indicate when a secondary group is being used to supplant, rather than support, the church’s official, elected governance.

In Leadership Behaviour and Proposals

  • Formation of a Parallel Power Structure: A new, invitation-only group (e.g., “Co-Leaders,” “Vision Team”) is formed that meets more frequently and discusses more substantive, directional issues than the official board.
  • Rerouting Accountability: The leader proposes or implements a structure where ministry leaders are “directly accountable to myself”, rather than to the elected governing body (PCC) or through existing, transparent processes.
  • Systematic Devaluation of the Board: The leader frequently frames the official board as slow, bureaucratic, or unspiritual, and redefines its role as being for “practical/financial matters” only, while the new group discerns the “whole church direction”.
  • Making Ministry Conditional: Participation in ministry or holding a leadership position becomes conditional on being invited into, and participating in, the leader’s exclusive discipleship group (e.g., a Huddle).
  • Withholding Key Information: The system’s core language and concepts (e.g., LifeShapes) are deliberately taught only within the private, hand-picked group, creating an information asymmetry that prevents the official board from understanding the full implications of the leader’s agenda.
  • Dismissing Uninitiated Opinions: The leader justifies ignoring the board’s counsel by claiming their opinions are not “worth considering” until they have been through the leader’s specific discipleship process.
  • Theological Justification for Favouritism: When challenged about creating an exclusive inner circle, the leader dismisses concerns by stating that Jesus “doesn’t try to be fair” and “didn’t care what they thought,” framing pastoral favouritism as a biblical model.

In Community Culture

  • A Visible Two-Tier System: An ‘in’ group and an ‘out’ group become obvious, where access to the leader, strategic information, and influence is clearly restricted to members of the informal inner circle.
  • Confusion Over Who Is in Charge: A vague but persistent sense of confusion spreads through the congregation about who holds the actual authority to make decisions for the church.
  • Official Meetings Become a Formality: Official board meetings devolve into “rubber-stamping sessions” for decisions that have clearly been made elsewhere beforehand.
  • Privileged vs. Irrelevant Gatherings: Participation in the leader’s private group is seen as a high privilege and mandatory for those included, while official board meetings are perceived as unimportant or are poorly attended.

If You’re on the Official Board (PCC or Elder board):

  • Meetings feel like rubber stamping sessions for what has been agreed elsewhere. A frustrating sense that you are being asked to rubber-stamp decisions you had no part in making.
  • Feeling confused, marginalised, and powerless. You are legally responsible for the church but have no real input on its direction.
  • Feeling like many on the board are always the last to know about important plans or problems.

If You’re in the new “Inner Circle”:

  • Feeling special, chosen, and spiritually important.
  • A sense that you are part of the “real” work of the church and have privileged access to the leader and to insider information.
  • Pressure to maintain loyalty to the leader’s vision, as your position depends on their personal invitation.

  • Political/Corporate Terms: Shadow cabinet, kitchen cabinet, parallel governance, soft coup.

  • Survivor Language: “The ‘in’ crowd,” “the pastor’s cronies,” “sidelining the elders,” “the real leadership team.”

From Breen’s System:

  • The Huddle is the primary vehicle for this bypass, defined as an invitation-only group for “current or future leaders,” with the leader setting all the terms, including who is invited.
  • Leaders are advised to teach the system’s core language (LifeShapes) exclusively within Huddles, not in public sermons, ensuring that only the hand-picked “in-group” is privy to the full system and its implications.
  • The “Square” model provides the theological justification for ignoring the input of the official board by defining those who haven’t been through the system as incompetent and their opinions as not “worth considering”.

In the parish setting:

  • The explicit creation of “Co-leaders” and “Huddle Leaders” as a separate, more nimble leadership body.
  • The justification that the PCC’s bimonthly meetings are “clearly inadequate” for missional leadership, necessitating a new structure that can “meet more frequently”.
  • The redefinition of the PCC’s role to focus on “practical/financial matters”, while the Co-Leaders are tasked to “help me discern whole church direction towards the vision”.
  • The leader’s statement that he “personally and prayerfully selected these people” who are then “directly accountable to myself as vicar”.

What Genuine Spiritual Leadership Looks Like:

  • Leaders work transparently with and through the established, accountable structures of the church.
  • Bonhoeffer defines the source of true authority in Life Together:

“Pastoral authority is attained only by the servant of Jesus who seeks no power of his own, who is himself a brother among brothers submitted to the Word’s authority.”

  • If a governing structure is inefficient, leaders initiate a transparent process to reform it, not create an alternative decision making structure.

  • Advisory groups are clearly defined as advisory, with their recommendations being brought to the official governing body for actual decision-making.

  • Power is honoured according to the church’s legal and biblical polity, respecting the role and authority of elected representatives.

If You’re on the Official Board:

  • recognise the urgency. This may be the critical window to act before your authority is completely eroded.
  • Understand your legal and fiduciary responsibilities. Do not abdicate them.
  • Insist on being part of the decision-making process from the beginning. Do not approve budgets or plans that you have not had adequate time to review and amend.
  • Ask direct questions in meetings: “Where and when was this decision actually made?” and “Why was the PCC not included in these discussions?”

If You’re in the Congregation:

  • Attend your Annual Parochial Church Meeting (APCM).
  • Ask clarifying questions about the roles and authority of different leadership groups.
  • Use your vote to elect representatives who will commit to upholding their governing responsibility and challenge this parallel structure.

If You’re Invited into the “Inner Circle”:

  • Be aware of the dynamic you are participating in.
  • Advocate for transparency and the inclusion of the official, elected leadership in key discussions.
  • Ask why these conversations are happening in a Huddle instead of at a PCC meeting.

Section 2: Indoctrination and Control

With a compliant core selected, the system’s next operational phase is to solidify its influence. This stage moves beyond simple filtering and begins a process of deep ideological and emotional integration. this stage reshapes a follower’s internal world—their decision-making processes, their emotional regulation, and their connection to God—to align with the system’s logic.

The techniques in this section are mechanisms of deep conditioning. Discernment Hijacking systematically replaces personal spiritual autonomy with a mandatory, group-mediated process. Engineered Vulnerability forges powerful emotional bonds through a psychologically potent cycle of crisis and rescue. These processes are often given divine authority through the use of Authority Laundering, which embeds the system’s logic into a scriptural framework.

The cumulative effect of these techniques is the creation of profound dependency. Followers lose confidence in their ability to navigate their spiritual and emotional lives without the system’s intervention. Personal intuition is replaced by a prescribed formula, and the leader or group becomes the indispensable mediator of truth, comfort, and divine will.

Analysing these methods reveals the mechanics behind how a person’s innermost thoughts and feelings can become subject to external control.

Indoctrination and Control

Discernment Hijacking

Circle Huddle

Strategic Function: Replaces an individual’s personal spiritual discernment with a mandatory, group-mediated process, making the leader and the system indispensable conduits of divine wisdom. This creates profound spiritual dependency and conditions followers to distrust their own intuition in favour of the group’s formula.

Definition

A system or process that inserts a leader or group between an individual and God, replacing personal spiritual discernment with a structured, mandatory, and externally-mediated process.

It functions like a middleman who claims to be helping you understand what God is saying to you but, in reality, filters, interprets, and often replaces that discernment with a group-approved agenda. Instead of teaching someone how to engage with God directly, this technique teaches them to engage with a process, making the leader and the group the indispensable conduits of divine wisdom.

Leaders present this structured process as a reliable and effective tool for spiritual growth. The justification is appealing because it addresses a genuine spiritual need—the desire for clarity in hearing God’s voice.

  • A Pathway for the Confused: The primary argument is that many people “struggle to confidently recognise the Lord’s voice” and “have no means of knowing when God is at work in their lives”. The system is offered as a clear, practical framework to help them learn.
  • A Biblical Mandate for Process: The technique is framed as the direct application of biblical commands. For example, a six-step process like the Learning Circle is presented as the way to live out Jesus’s call to “Repent and believe”.
  • The Power of Community Wisdom: The model emphasises the importance of community in overcoming personal blind spots. It leverages the biblical principle of confessing to one another to argue that true change can only happen when we “invite others into the process with us”.

While the intention may be stated as providing helpful guidance, the technique moves from offering an optional tool to mandating a required process, which is where the hijacking occurs.

⚙️ The Underlying Mechanism

This technique systematically replaces an individual’s internal spiritual connection with an external, group-driven process.

  • Intercepts & Reframes Reality: The leader or group identifies a person’s life event—often a struggle or emotional experience—and labels it as a divine intervention (kairos moment) that must be processed through the system.
  • Mandates External Processing: Private prayer and reflection are devalued in favor of a required group discussion. The system dictates that for spiritual change (repentance) to be effective, “we’ve got to share it with someone else” within the group’s prescribed context, like a Huddle.
  • Prescribes & Monitors behaviour: The process does not end with confession. It requires the individual to create a concrete action “plan” that the group then holds them “accountable” to, giving the group oversight of personal life choices.
  • Replaces Intuition with a Formula: The individual is conditioned to distrust their own spiritual instincts and rely exclusively on the group’s formulaic process to understand God’s will.

🌪️ The Ripple Effect

The long-term consequences of this technique are a loss of spiritual autonomy and an unhealthy dependence on the group.

  • Creates Spiritual Dependency: Individuals lose confidence in their ability to hear from God, read the Bible, or make wise decisions without the group’s validation. The leader becomes an indispensable spiritual mediator.
  • Erodes Personal Boundaries: The system gives the group license to intrude into deeply personal areas such as finances, family relationships, and career choices under the guise of accountability.
  • Produces Inauthenticity: Vulnerability is no longer a spontaneous outcome of trust but a required performance within the group’s structure. Personal spiritual journeys are forced to conform to the same predictable, formulaic pattern.
  • Conflates the Group’s Voice with God’s Voice: Over time, the group’s consensus or the leader’s guidance becomes indistinguishable from the will of God, making disagreement feel like disobedience to God himself.

In Leadership Behaviour:

  • Insistence that all significant life decisions must be “processed” through a small group or Huddle.
  • A leader who frequently asks, “What did the group say about that?” as the final word on a matter.
  • Spiritual experiences or insights gained outside the group’s process are treated with suspicion or devalued.
  • A pattern of reframing personal struggles or even legitimate grievances as kairos moments that require the individual to repent and change.

In Community Culture:

  • A belief that true spiritual breakthrough only happens through the community’s specific, trademarked process (e.g., “going around the Circle”).
  • Widespread anxiety or hesitation among members to make decisions without first consulting their group.
  • Testimonies that all follow the same formulaic, step-by-step pattern of the prescribed process.
  • An environment where “We need to put you through the Circle” is a common response to any problem.
  • Initially, it can feel incredibly supportive and clear. You may feel relief at having a “roadmap” for your spiritual life and a group to walk it with you.
  • Over time, you may feel constricted, as if you can’t trust your own prayers or thoughts until they have been validated by the group.
  • You might feel a sense of anxiety when facing a problem, knowing that bringing it to the group means it will be put through the “machine,” resulting in a mandatory action plan that will be closely monitored.
  • It can feel like your relationship with God has a required middleman, and you can no longer approach God on your own with confidence.

Clinical Terms: Mediated thinking, external locus of control, group-induced dependency, learned helplessness.

Terms from Steven Hassan’s BITE Model:

  • Information Control: The system restricts how a person can access spiritual insight, teaching that true discernment is only available through the group’s specific process or leader.
  • Thought Control: The technique systematically shuts down a person’s own critical thinking and spiritual reflection by replacing it with a required formula or process that must be followed to reach the “correct” conclusion.

From Breen’s System:

  • The Learning Circle: The entire six-step tool is the primary example of a discernment-hijacking process, moving a person from private experience to group-enforced action.
  • Mandatory Discussion for Repentance: The explicit teaching that repentance requires being shared with others in a Huddle to be effective.
  • Unconditional Accountability for Plans: The statement, “We cannot skip accountability and still say we are disciples of Christ. It is that simple,” which ties a person’s discipleship status to their submission to group monitoring.

Common Variations:

  • Expecting, either explicitly or implicitly, that a couple discuss with their huddle whether to get engaged.
  • Insisting that a person “process” a career change with their small group before accepting a new job.
  • A “discipleship” programme where the mentor’s advice is treated as binding.

What Genuine Spiritual Guidance Looks Like:

  • Leaders teach diverse principles and practices of discernment (e.g., prayer, Scripture study, fasting, listening to one’s conscience) and then empower individuals to use them.
  • Community is offered as a source of optional wisdom and support, not mandatory processing. The final decision always rests with the individual.
  • A leader’s response to a problem is more likely to be, “How are you praying about that?” rather than, “Let’s put you through the process.”
  • Accountability is voluntary and mutual, with individuals choosing who they trust and setting their own boundaries for what they share.

Biblical Examples:

  • Paul advising the Corinthians but ultimately leaving the decision to their own conscience (1 Corinthians 10:23-30).
  • The Bereans being praised for examining the Scriptures themselves to see if what Paul said was true (Acts 17:11).
  • The Holy Spirit is given directly to every believer, not just to leaders or groups (Acts 2:38, 1 Corinthians 12:7).

If You’re Currently Experiencing This:

  • Trust your own spiritual connection. Remember that the Holy Spirit dwells in you.
  • Start practicing personal discernment on small matters without bringing them to the group to rebuild your confidence.
  • Seek counsel from a trusted, mature believer outside of the system to get an objective perspective.
  • Remind yourself that seeking wisdom is different from surrendering your decision-making authority.

If You’ve Left a System Like This:

  • recognise that your intuition was likely a healthy sign of the Holy Spirit prompting you, not a sign of rebellion.
  • Be patient with yourself as you relearn to trust your own ability to hear from God. This may take time.
  • Process any anger or grief you feel about having your relationship with God interfered with.
  • Find a community where personal responsibility and direct access to God are celebrated.

Supporting Others:

  • Affirm their ability to hear from God directly.
  • Ask questions that empower their own thinking, such as, “What do you feel God is saying to you in this?” or “What does your gut tell you?”
  • Encourage them to engage in personal spiritual practices outside of the group’s structure.
  • Listen without judgement and validate their feelings of confusion or constriction.

Indoctrination and Control

Engineered Vulnerability

Square Invitation & Challenge Huddle

Strategic Function: Creates a powerful bond of dependency by inducing emotional or spiritual distress, followed by a subsequent rescue. This cycle of destabilisation and relief breaks down a person’s natural resilience and forges an intense, trauma-based attachment to the leader, who becomes the sole source of comfort.

Definition

A process where a leader or system intentionally creates emotional or spiritual distress, instability, or a sense of crisis in an individual, followed by a calculated period of comfort, affirmation, or rescue. This cycle of artificially induced pain and relief is designed to break down a person’s natural resilience and foster a powerful bond of dependency on the leader.

Crucially, this technique also teaches individuals to misinterpret their own genuine mental or emotional distress as a necessary part of a spiritual process, often discouraging them from seeking appropriate professional care.

Leaders present this intense process as a necessary and loving catalyst for deep spiritual transformation.

  • “Breakthrough” Requires “Breaking Down”: The technique is framed as a prerequisite for authentic growth, suggesting that people cannot achieve true spiritual breakthrough without first being broken down. Negative kairos moments are described as having the “greatest potential for growth”.
  • It’s the “Jesus Model”: The method is justified by claiming it mirrors how Jesus discipled his followers. The critical analysis notes that Breen presents Jesus as the “ultimate horse-whisperer” who created a culture with an “appropriate mix of invitation and challenge”.
  • Presented as “Tough Love”: The act of inducing distress is framed as a mark of deep love and commitment. Breen describes a discipler as someone who “loves you enough to take you to the place where you live out of your true identity… even when getting you there may be hard sometimes”.
  • It Offers an All-Encompassing Map: The system presents itself as having a spiritual explanation for every human struggle. This can lead leaders to believe they are equipped to handle complex psychological issues, seeing everything through the lens of their model (e.g., “This isn’t a mental health issue; this is just D2”).

The justification is powerful because it reframes an artificially manufactured crisis as a profound act of pastoral care, making the induced pain seem both necessary and loving.

⚙️ The Underlying Mechanism

This technique operates on a cycle of destabilization and rescue that is clinically recognised for its power to create intense emotional bonds.

  • Creates Instability (The “Challenge”): The leader uses a “position of challenge” to induce a crisis, mirroring the horse-trainer who intimidates a horse into submission. This is the mandatory Stage 2 (D2) “pit of despair” that the model requires disciples to experience.
  • Provides Relief (The “Invitation”): After the crisis has been induced, the leader steps in to offer comfort, encouragement, and a pathway out, becoming the “sole source” of comfort and validation.
  • Fosters Dependency (The Bond): This psychologically exhausting cycle of pressure and release is what forges the bond. Breen himself describes the experience as “addictive,” creating disciples who are “ruined for life” for any other environment. The critical analysis explicitly compares this dynamic to the conditions required for trauma bonding.

🌪️ The Ripple Effect

The consistent use of this cycle fundamentally alters a person’s emotional and spiritual health.

  • Creates Emotional Dependency: Individuals become dependent on the leader not just for guidance, but for emotional regulation—for relief from the very anxiety the leader creates.
  • Spiritualises Mental Health Crises: The system’s jargon (“D2,” “pit of despair,” “breakthrough”) is used to relabel and spiritualise genuine psychological distress. Leaders may dismiss signs of burnout, depression, or anxiety as simply a necessary “stage,” telling individuals they just need to “push through” rather than see a doctor or therapist. This can lead to years of untreated mental health issues.
  • Erodes Natural Resilience: People lose confidence in their own ability to navigate hardship, believing they need a leader-induced crisis to truly grow.
  • Normalises Manipulative behaviour: The community begins to see emotional manipulation, public challenges, and induced breakdowns as signs of “deep” or “authentic” discipleship.

In Leadership Behaviour:

  • A pattern of creating drama, conflict, or high-pressure situations and then stepping in to “pastor” people through them.
  • The use of public “challenge,” confrontation, or correction that leaves individuals feeling exposed and destabilised.
  • Dismissing clear signs of mental or emotional distress with spiritual jargon (e.g., “You’re just in D2”).
  • An insistence that “real growth” is always painful and difficult.

In Community Culture:

  • The glorification of “breakdown” and “breakthrough” narratives.
  • A palpable sense of emotional whiplash, where the environment can shift rapidly from intense and demanding to loving and supportive.
  • Stories of people hitting “rock bottom” are celebrated as the primary pathway to spiritual maturity.
  • A general suspicion of or disregard for professional mental health care in favor of the group’s “process.”
  • A confusing and exhausting combination of feeling constantly on edge and feeling deeply seen and cared for.
  • A profound sense of gratitude and loyalty toward the very person or system that is also the source of your stress and anxiety.
  • You may begin to doubt your own body and mind, interpreting signs of genuine distress (like anxiety or depression) as a personal spiritual failing or a necessary “stage” you must endure.
  • You may feel that you are growing at an incredible rate, but you also feel constantly exhausted and emotionally fragile.
  • Clinical Terms: Trauma bonding, cycle of abuse (tension-building, incident, reconciliation/honeymoon phase), intermittent reinforcement.
  • Terms from Steven Hassan’s BITE Model: Emotional Control, which includes manipulating people through fear and engineering guilt.
  • Survivor Language: “Emotional rollercoaster,” “breaking you down to build you up,” “manufactured crisis,” “love bombing and withdrawal.”

From Breen’s System:

  • The Horse-Breaking Metaphor: The foundational analogy for discipleship is a process of psychological pressure and release designed to “break the spirit” and achieve “complete submission to a master”.
  • The Invitation/Challenge Cycle: The prescribed “constant calibration” of pressure and relief that Breen calls “addictive”.
  • The Mandatory “Pit of Despair”: The requirement in Breen’s Four-Stage Square that disciples must go through a D2 crisis where their confidence “hits rock bottom” before they can be considered worthy of contributing.

Common Variations:

  • A small group leader dismissing a member’s struggles with anxiety by telling them, “That’s not anxiety, that’s just the Lord challenging you. You need to push through it.”
  • A leader who publicly shames a church member from the pulpit for a perceived failure, and then privately meets with them to offer “grace” and “restoration.”
  • Creating an artificial, high-stakes deadline for a ministry project that causes extreme stress, followed by praise and celebration for those who “pushed through.”

What Genuine Pastoral Care Looks Like:

  • Leaders help people navigate the naturally occurring crises of life with compassion, wisdom, and stability. They do not create new ones.
  • Emotional and psychological well-being are taken seriously. Leaders encourage seeking professional medical or therapeutic help when appropriate and see it as a valid part of a person’s journey with God.
  • Growth is understood to be a steady, long-term process that includes seasons of peace and joy, not just a series of dramatic breakdowns and breakthroughs.
  • The leader is a “non-anxious presence,” helping to bring calm and perspective to difficult situations.

Biblical Examples:

  • Jesus calming the storm, offering peace in the midst of a real crisis (Mark 4:35-41).
  • The Apostle Paul’s instruction for leaders to be gentle, not quarrelsome or domineering (1 Timothy 3:3, Titus 1:7).
  • The fruit of the Spirit, which includes peace, patience, kindness, and self-control—qualities that are the opposite of an engineered crisis (Galatians 5:22-23).

If You’re Currently Experiencing This:

  • Learn to identify the cycle. Naming the pattern of “pressure-then-relief” can help you detach from its emotional power.
  • If you are experiencing persistent anxiety, depression, or burnout, give yourself permission to consult a medical professional, regardless of what the group’s culture suggests.
  • Trust your exhaustion. Constant emotional intensity is not a sign of spiritual health.

If You’ve Left a System Like This:

  • Re-evaluate past ‘spiritual struggles’ through a mental health lens. The system may have taught you to label genuine anxiety, depression, or burnout as a ‘spiritual test’ or a ‘discipleship stage’ (e.g., “D2”). Give yourself permission to seek professional help to untangle these experiences and care for your well-being.
  • Understand that the intense emotional bond you felt may have been a trauma bond, not a healthy spiritual connection. This can be painful to accept but is crucial for healing.
  • Give yourself permission to seek stability and peace. You do not need to live in a state of constant crisis to grow.

Supporting Others:

  • Help them identify the pattern without invalidating their feelings. You can say, “It sounds like he really hurts you, and then he is the one to make you feel better. That must be so confusing.”
  • Validate their physical and emotional reality. If they say they are anxious or exhausted, affirm that their experience is real and that seeking professional help is a wise and valid option.
  • Provide a stable, non-anxious presence in their life.

Indoctrination and Control

Authority Laundering

Square Person of Peace Circle Huddle Narrative Control Invitation & Challenge

Strategic Function: This technique claims God’s approval for a manipulative technique or controlling power structure by using an out-of-context Bible verse. This wraps a human agenda in divine authority, short-circuiting critical thinking and making the system’s ideas difficult to challenge without appearing unspiritual.

Definition

The use of a Bible verse, often taken out of its historical and literary context, to provide divine justification for a manipulative technique or controlling power structure.

This technique is a foundational element in many of the methods described in this toolkit. To understand how it works, we will look at how it is justified, its impact, and the tools you can use to identify and respond to it.

This technique works by leveraging the Bible’s legitimate spiritual authority. A leader presents their interpretation of a verse as the faithful or “simple” reading. By doing this, they create a false choice: either you accept their interpretation, or you are questioning the Bible itself.

The issue is not the use of the Bible; a healthy relationship with Scripture is essential to the Christian faith. The problem is the misuse of Scripture as a tool to shut down questions and enforce a personal agenda. This method wraps a human idea in divine authority, making it difficult to challenge without appearing rebellious or unspiritual.

⚙️ The Underlying Mechanism

This often works through a process of priming and switching. A leader will first build trust by offering several standard, widely-accepted interpretations of well-known Bible verses. Once the audience is primed to accept their teaching as orthodox, they will introduce a novel or distorted interpretation of a new verse.

This new interpretation is the “authority laundering.” It carries the manipulative idea into the listener’s mind under the cover of biblical authority.

This is the difference between reading meaning out of the text (healthy interpretation) and reading your own ideas into the text (manipulative interpretation). Healthy teaching draws its conclusions from the context of Scripture; a Trojan Verse imposes a pre-determined conclusion onto Scripture.

🌪️ The Ripple Effect

The novel interpretation becomes the justification for a controlling practise or an unaccountable power structure that would otherwise be rejected. It gives a divine mandate to a human agenda.

This short-circuits critical thinking and spiritual discernment. Congregants are conditioned to accept questionable teachings because they are attached to a Bible verse, effectively stamping a manipulative technique with God’s seal of approval. This can lead to entire communities adopting harmful practices under the belief that they are being obedient to Scripture.

  • “Just a Simple Preacher”: A leader frequently prefaces a controversial teaching by saying, “I’m not a theologian, but…” or “Let’s not overcomplicate this.” This is often a tactic to discourage listeners from examining the context too closely.
  • Doctrinal Overreach: An entire complex doctrine or church practice is built upon a single, isolated verse without support from the broader themes of Scripture.
  • Power Consolidation: The interpretation of the verse consistently grants more power, authority, and less accountability to the leader or inner circle.
  • Dismissing Questions: When you ask questions about the historical context or surrounding verses, you are told you are “overthinking it,” “lacking faith,” or “being divisive.”
  • Obedience Re-Routing: Verses about obedience to God are misapplied to demand unquestioning obedience to the leader or the organisation’s rules.
  • Confusion and Unease: You feel that something is “off” or inconsistent about the teaching, but you struggle to articulate it because it’s tied to a Bible verse. It creates a conflict between your intuition and the text in front of you.
  • Guilt and Self-Doubt: Questioning the leader’s interpretation feels like you are questioning the Bible itself. You may feel guilty, unspiritual, or rebellious for having doubts.
  • Pressure to Conform: You may see the contextual problems with the interpretation but feel social pressure to ignore them to remain in good standing with the community.
  • Disorientation: You begin to doubt your own ability to read and understand the Bible, leading you to become more dependent on the leader for all spiritual insight.
  • Theological Terms: Proof-texting, eisegesis, decontextualization.
  • Logical Fallacies: Quoting out of context, appeal to authority.
  • Survivor Language: “Weaponising Scripture,” “twisting the Bible,” “cherry-picking verses.”
  • Justifying Unfairness: Breen uses Jesus’s relationship with his inner circle to claim that “Apparently, Jesus didn’t care what they thought” and “he doesn’t try to be fair,” providing a justification for pastoral favouritism and dismissing the concerns of those who feel excluded.
  • Claiming a Leader’s Identity: Breen’s teaching that when Jesus named Peter “rock,” Peter took on Jesus’s identity as the rock, creating a model for a dangerous level of identity transference between a disciple and their leader.
  • The Bible as a Simple Manual: The claim that the “simplest way to view the gospel is as a direct instruction manual to the church,” which dismisses the Bible’s rich diversity of literary styles, historical contexts, and theological depth in favour of a flat, literalism that is easier to control.

The Bible, when handled correctly, is a source of profound wisdom, freedom, and life—not a manual for control. A healthy relationship with Scripture is one of the most powerful safeguards against spiritual abuse.

What Genuine Biblical Engagement Looks Like:

  • Context is King: Scripture is always read in its full context—the verses around it, the chapter it’s in, the book it belongs to, and its place in the overarching story of the Bible.
  • Questions are Encouraged: Doubts and difficult questions are seen as opportunities for deeper learning, not as signs of rebellion. Leaders humbly admit when they don’t have all the answers.
  • Community Discernment: Interpretations are discussed openly and weighed against the historic teachings of the wider Church and the wisdom of the local community.
  • The Fruit Test: Healthy teaching produces the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). Teaching that produces fear, division, and anxiety is not from God.

For encouragement, hold on to these promises about the nature of truth and Scripture:

To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” — John 8:31-32 (NIV)

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth. — 2 Timothy 2:15 (NIV)

If You’re Currently Experiencing This:

  • Trust your instincts—if an interpretation feels “off,” it’s worth investigating. Legitimate teaching can withstand scrutiny.
  • Seek perspective from mature believers outside the organisation who are known for their love of Scripture.
  • Document the specific verses and the interpretations being given.
  • Maintain relationships and support systems outside the group.
  • Remember that God gave you a mind to think critically and a spirit to discern truth.

If You’ve Left a System Like This:

  • recognise that your concerns were likely valid signs of healthy spiritual discernment, not spiritual deficiency.
    • Give yourself permission to rebuild your trust in the Bible. The issue was the abuser’s handling of the text, not the text itself.
    • Process the grief of having something beautiful used as a weapon.
    • Seek counseling if needed to rebuild confidence in your ability to read and understand Scripture for yourself.

Supporting Others:

  • Listen without immediately trying to “fix” their situation or debate theology.
  • Gently ask questions that encourage them to look at the context of a verse.
  • Provide alternative community experiences where the Bible is taught in a healthy, life-giving way.
  • Avoid pressuring them to leave—focus on empowering them to trust their own God-given discernment.

Section 3: Defending the System

Once a compliant, dependent core has been established, the system’s final operational phase is to preserve its stability. This stage involves the deployment of sophisticated defensive mechanisms that insulate the group from both internal dissent and external criticism. The function of this phase is to maintain the integrity of the echo chamber and protect the leader’s unaccountable position at its centre.

The techniques in this section operate as a comprehensive defence system. Internal threats are managed through Gift Suppression, a typology based on the five fold ministry (apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, teacher) model that provides a ready-made arsenal of labels to pathologise and dismiss any spiritual or theological challenge that arises from within. External threats are addressed through Ventriloquism and the Hero’s Journey narrative, which use proxies and sophisticated storytelling to manage the leader’s reputation, reframe failure, and deflect criticism from outside sources.

The cumulative effect of these defenses is a self-sealing system that becomes impervious to corrective feedback. Accountability is effectively neutralised, as internal questions are framed as spiritual immaturity and external critiques are dismissed as attacks from the uninformed or unkind. The system can now perpetuate itself, regardless of its impact on those inside or outside of it.

By examining these defensive tools, we can understand the mechanisms that allow a high-control environment to sustain itself over time, even in the face of significant moral or ethical challenges.

Defending the System

Ventriloquism

Huddle Narrative Control

Strategic Function: Allows the leader to deliver self-aggrandising or defensive messages through a proxy, such as a spouse or team member. This strategy launders the leader’s narrative, creates a human shield against criticism, and allows them to reap the benefits of the message while maintaining plausible deniability.

Definition

A communication strategy where a leader’s message is delivered through a proxy—typically a spouse, mentee, or hand-picked team—to say things the leader cannot say themselves without appearing arrogant, defensive, or self-serving. The technique “launders” the narrative by passing it through a trusted or sympathetic figure, giving it enhanced credibility and emotional weight.

This effectively creates a human shield, making it difficult to critique the message without appearing to attack the proxy. The leader benefits from the praise, defence, or grandiose claims, while maintaining a posture of humility and plausible deniability (“I didn’t say that; they did”). This is particularly effective when the proxy is a figure audiences are conditioned to protect, such as a spouse.

The use of proxies is rarely acknowledged as a strategy. Instead, it is framed as an organic and virtuous expression of community support:

  • Independent Validation: The proxy’s words are presented as objective, third-party testimony, confirming the leader’s character and the validity of their journey.
  • Community Testimony: Portrayed as the natural outpouring of support from those who “know the leader best.”
  • Spiritual Confirmation: The proxy may claim to have received a direct word from God, providing divine endorsement that the leader could not claim for themselves.
  • Letting Others Speak Their Truth: The leader can present themselves as humbly stepping back to allow others to share their own experiences and perspectives on the situation.

These justifications leverage the value of community and accountability, but co-opt them to validate a pre-determined narrative controlled by the leader.

⚙️ The Underlying Mechanism

This describes how the technique manipulates communication and accountability.

  • 🗣️ Outsources the Ego: Allows for self-aggrandizement by proxy. The leader reaps the benefits of praise and grand claims without bearing the social cost of arrogance.
  • 🛡️ Creates a Human Shield: Deflects scrutiny. Any challenge to the proxy’s statement is reframed as a personal attack on a loyal friend, a faithful spouse, or a sincere mentee, silencing critics.
  • 🎭 Simulates Consensus: The voices of a few carefully selected allies are amplified to sound like the unified voice of the entire community, creating a false sense of widespread endorsement.
  • 🧼 Launders the Narrative: The leader’s preferred story is “cleaned” of self-interest by being told through someone else, making it appear more objective and trustworthy.

🌪️ The Ripple Effect

This strategy has predictable and damaging consequences for authentic accountability.

  • 🔇 Dissent is Silenced: Individuals hesitate to question the official narrative for fear of being seen as attacking a sympathetic figure, like the leader’s wife.
  • ✖️ The Victim is Invalidated: The supportive testimony of the proxies can implicitly or explicitly overwrite the experience of those who were harmed.
  • 📉 Trust Erodes: Observers who recognise the coordinated messaging feel manipulated, leading to a loss of trust in the leader and the organisation’s integrity.
  • 🚫 The Leader Evades Direct Accountability: The leader is never forced to answer for the grandiose claims made on their behalf, allowing them to remain above the fray.

In Leadership Behaviour:

  • The leader consistently deflects direct questions about their character, redirecting them to their spouse or inner circle.
  • Public statements of accountability rely heavily on testimonials from family, friends, and mentees.
  • The leader frequently quotes praise they have received from others as evidence of their restoration or qualification.
  • A spouse or “team” speaks publicly on matters of controversy, while the leader remains silent or adopts a more reserved posture.

In Community Culture:

  • A leader’s family members are positioned as the ultimate arbiters of the leader’s character.
  • Critical feedback about the leader is dismissed as an attack on their family.
  • A small, consistent group of insiders provides all public validation for the leader.
  • The narrative of a leader’s “restoration” is primarily told through the voices of others.

As an Observer:

  • Feeling emotionally conflicted; you may disagree with the message but feel guilty for questioning the seemingly sincere person delivering it.
  • A sense that the communication is stage-managed or performative.
  • Confusion over who is actually accountable for the statements being made.

As the Proxy (The Voice):

  • An intense pressure to defend the leader, as your loyalty and relationship are publicly on display.
  • A sense that your identity is becoming fused with the leader’s reputation.
  • Your own personal story and pain may be co-opted and framed in a way that primarily serves the leader’s restoration narrative.
  • Clinical Terms: Triangulation, proxy communication, impression management
  • PR/Marketing Terms: Third-party endorsement, testimonial marketing, reputation laundering
  • Survivor Language: “Using his wife as a shield,” “getting others to speak for him,” “controlled messaging,” “PR by proxy”

From Breen’s Letters and Foreword:

  • Defensive Rebuttal via Proxy: Mike Breen cannot credibly dismiss public criticism himself without sounding defensive. His wife, Sally, can. She writes that “much of what was said online and publicly about Mike was untrue and unkind”. This allows his narrative to include a defence while he maintains a posture of contrition.
  • Grandiose Framing via Proxy: Breen cannot claim his personal failure is a model for the global church without appearing megalomaniacal. His “Restoration Team” can. They state their goal is to show his process as “a pathway for future growth and healing for the entire body of Christ”.
  • Divine Validation via Proxy: It would be audacious for Breen to claim God personally vouched for him. His wife can relay this message. Sally recounts God telling her, “‘I love Mike so very much.’ He replied, ‘But I love him more. Hand him over to me. I will take very good care of him. I know his heart’”.
  • Character Validation via Mentees: The Restoration Team letter is filled with quotes from mentees praising Breen’s journey in ways that would be self-serving if he said them himself, such as, “I have seen a broken Mike and a vulnerable Mike that I have not seen before” and praising his “candor and honesty”.

What Genuine Accountability Looks Like:

  • Leaders speak for themselves, using direct “I” statements to take full ownership of their actions and the harm caused.
  • Accountability processes are overseen by impartial, independent bodies, not by hand-picked friends, family, or financial dependents.
  • The voices and experiences of victims are centred and given priority, rather than the validating testimony of allies.
  • Humility is demonstrated through substantive actions (e.g., submitting to consequences, stepping down from power), not proclaimed by proxies.

Biblical Examples:

  • David’s direct confession in Psalm 51 (“Against you, you only, have I sinned”), taking personal ownership without proxies.
  • Zacchaeus’s public declaration of his own intent to make restitution (Luke 19:8).
  • Paul’s defence of his ministry in his own words, directly addressing his critics and taking responsibility for his message.

If You’re Currently Observing This:

  • Practise separating the message from the messenger. Ask yourself: “If the leader were saying these exact words, how would I receive them?”
  • Be aware of the emotional manipulation at play. It is possible to feel compassion for a proxy (like a spouse) while still critically evaluating the message they are delivering.
  • Look for who is NOT speaking. Whose voices are absent from the narrative?

If You’ve Left a System Like This:

  • Validate your own feelings of discomfort or suspicion. Recognising coordinated messaging is not cynicism; it is discernment.
  • Acknowledge that you were placed in an emotionally compromising position, forced to choose between accepting a narrative and appearing to attack a sympathetic person.
  • Give yourself permission to hold the leader accountable for the words spoken on their behalf.

Supporting Others:

  • If someone is acting as a proxy, approach them with compassion, recognszing they may be under immense pressure.
  • Help others untangle the message from the messenger.
  • Encourage a focus on the leader’s direct actions and statements, rather than the testimony of their inner circle.

Defending the System

Gift Suppression

Pentagon

Strategic Function: neutralises internal dissent by providing a system of weaponised labels disguised as a spiritual typology. By defining any challenging expression of a spiritual gift as “immature,” this technique pathologises and dismisses predictable threats to the leader’s authority, such as prophetic correction or theological critique.

Definition

A spiritual typology framework that assigns every member of the community one of five “fivefold” ministry roles: Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Pastor, or Teacher. While presented as a tool for empowerment and discovering one’s calling, its primary function as a control mechanism lies in its carefully constructed definitions of “immature” expressions of each role.

These definitions of immaturity are not neutral descriptions of spiritual development. They are weaponised labels designed to pathologise and neutralise specific, predictable threats to a leader’s authority and the system’s integrity. By defining what a “mature” gift looks like, the system gains the power to delegitimise any authentic expression of a gift that challenges the status quo.

The system is presented as a positive and empowering biblical framework:

  • Biblical Empowerment: It is framed as fulfilling the command in Ephesians 4 to equip every member for ministry, “unleashing the members of the body to function at their full potential”.
  • Personal Discovery: It is offered as a tool to help people find their “base ministry” so they can stop “trying to be someone we are not” and stand under God’s “bucket of grace”.
  • Spiritual Maturity: The “immature” labels are justified as helpful diagnostics to encourage well-roundedness and move people from “infancy to maturity”.
  • Church Unity: The entire process is aimed at achieving “unity in the faith,” suggesting that adhering to the defined roles is necessary for the health of the body.

The justification uses the language of personal growth and biblical fidelity to mask a system of behavioural conditioning.

⚙️ The Underlying Mechanism

This describes how the “immature” definitions are engineered to control dissent.

  • 🚫 neutralises Prophetic Challenge: An “immature Prophet” is defined as one who interprets a revelation themselves instead of releasing it to the “community” to weigh and interpret. This gives the leader (who controls the compliant community) veto power over any inconvenient word from God.
  • ** Disarms Biblical Scrutiny:** An “immature Teacher” is someone who idolises Scripture (“Bibliolotry”) over a relationship with the “living and breathing God”. This disarms anyone who uses careful biblical exegesis to question the leader’s teachings, framing them as a dry intellectual who lacks a true connection to God.
  • 👑 Discredits Alternate Vision: An “immature Apostle” is defined as someone who jumps between ideas and projects, causing people to “stop following” them. This label can be easily applied to anyone who champions a new vision that competes with the leader’s established direction.
  • ⚠️ Pathologises Gentle Care: An “immature Pastor” is someone who avoids challenging people and lets them “sit in their brokenness far longer than should happen”. This delegitimises traditional, non-confrontational pastoral care and justifies a more invasive, leader-directed model of “moving people forward.”

🌪️ The Ripple Effect

This system of labeling creates a tightly controlled spiritual environment.

  • 🤫 Genuine Gifts are Stifled: Individuals with authentic prophetic or teaching gifts learn to suppress or alter them to fit the narrow, “mature” definitions, for fear of being labeled and dismissed.
  • 🧠 Critical Thinking is Replaced by Typology: Instead of engaging with ideas or concerns on their merits, the community learns to categorise people and their contributions using the APEST labels.
  • 🛡️ The Leader is Insulated from Challenge: The system provides a ready-made arsenal of labels to deflect any spiritual, theological, or visionary challenge before it can gain traction.
  • 👥 The Community Polices Itself: Members learn to use these diagnostic labels on one another, enforcing conformity and demonstrating their loyalty to the system’s definitions of maturity.

In Leadership Behaviour:

  • Using APEST labels to explain away or dismiss someone’s concerns (e.g., “That’s just your immature Prophet talking”).
  • Insisting that all prophetic words be “submitted to the community” before they can be considered valid.
  • Accusing those who raise detailed scriptural objections of “worshipping the Bible” or being “in their head.”
  • Criticising other leaders or churches for being too “pastoral” and not challenging enough.

In Community Culture:

  • People frequently identify themselves and others by their APEST role (“As an Apostle, I think…”).
  • A person’s spiritual maturity is judged by how well they conform to the system’s definition of their “base.”
  • There’s a palpable fear of being seen as “immature” in your gifting.
  • A person sharing a direct prophetic word is met with suspicion until the leader or group validates it.

If You’re Being Labeled:

  • Feeling deep confusion and self-doubt, as you are told the very spiritual gift you thought was from God is being used in an “immature” or “harmful” way.
  • Pressure to filter your God-given instincts through the group’s lens.
  • A sense that your identity is being put into a box that you must perform correctly to be accepted.

As an Observer:

  • Witnessing a powerful spiritual contribution being instantly neutralised by a simple label.
  • Feeling the social pressure to agree with the group’s assessment of someone as “immature.”
  • Becoming hesitant to share your own thoughts or gifts for fear they will be similarly pathologised.
  • Clinical Terms: Diagnostic abuse, spiritual typology, pathologising of dissent, behavioural framing
  • Survivor Language: “Weaponised giftings,” “putting you in a box,” “controlling prophecy,” “the immaturity label”

From Breen’s System:

  • The Prophetic Veto: An “immature Prophet… provide[s] the interpretation themselves and don’t release the prophecy to a community of people outside of them… An immature Prophet, having received some sort of revelation, wants to go straight to Application. This is incredibly harmful”.
  • The Theological Shield: An “immature Teacher” can “suffer from Bibliolotry in which they idolise Scripture and put it over their relationship with the living and breathing God”.
  • The Visionary Restraint: “Immature Apostles… jump from one project to another. After a while, people stop following Apostles because they have a hard time staying focused on the task at hand”.
  • The Pastoral Push: “Immature pastors sometimes don’t have the confidence to push or challenge people to move forward… for fear that the person will be angry with them”.

What Genuine Spiritual Community Looks Like:

  • Spiritual gifts are understood as diverse and are not forced into a rigid typology.
  • Prophetic words are weighed respectfully against Scripture and discerning wisdom, not required to pass through a single, leader-controlled “community” filter.
  • Deep theological questions are welcomed as a sign of engagement, not dismissed as a sign of spiritual immaturity.
  • Different expressions of pastoral care, apostolic vision, and evangelistic style are celebrated as part of the body’s diversity.

Biblical Examples:

  • The Bereans were praised for testing Paul’s apostolic teaching against Scripture daily (Acts 17:11).
  • Paul instructs the church to “weigh carefully what is said” by prophets (1 Corinthians 14:29), implying a process of discernment, not a forced consensus.
  • Jesus engaged with the rich theological questions of Nicodemus rather than labeling him.

If You’re Currently Experiencing This:

  • Anchor your understanding of your spiritual gifts in Scripture, not in one leader’s framework.
  • Be wary of any system that has a convenient label to dismiss your concerns.
  • recognise that forcing a spiritual gift through a man-made filter to be deemed “mature” is a form of control.
  • Seek wisdom from trusted believers outside the system who can offer an objective perspective.

If You’ve Left a System Like This:

  • Reclaim your spiritual gifts from the labels that were placed on them. Your desire to study Scripture was not “Bibliolotry”; your direct prophetic sense was not “harmful.”
  • Grieve the way your God-given identity may have been distorted to serve a system.
  • Find a community where gifts are celebrated in their diversity, not managed and controlled through diagnostic labels.

Supporting Others:

  • Affirm the validity of their spiritual gifts and experiences.
  • Help them see how the “immaturity” labels function to control behaviour.
  • Remind them that God’s gifts are “irrevocable” (Romans 11:29) and cannot be redefined by any human system.

Defending the System

Poisoning the Well

Narrative Control

Strategic Function: Creates immunity to accountability by pre-emptively framing all internal doubt and external criticism as a spiritual attack. This technique conditions followers to automatically dismiss corrective feedback without evaluating its content, thereby protecting the leader and the system from scrutiny.

Definition

A rhetorical pattern where leaders use biblical language about spiritual warfare to pre-emptively neutralise criticism, doubt, or negative feedback. By attributing pushback to demonic influence, the “well” of feedback becomes contaminated—making it impossible for followers to distinguish between genuine spiritual attack and legitimate concern.

Every challenge, regardless of merit, gets filtered through the same lens. This creates a powerful echo chamber where criticism becomes evidence of righteousness rather than a signal for reflection.

Two Primary Forms:

  1. External Poisoning: Framing outsiders, former members, or other churches who raise concerns as spiritually compromised or deceived.
  2. Internal Poisoning: Teaching that personal doubts, uncomfortable questions, or critical thoughts originate from demonic suggestion rather than conscience.

This approach transforms the language of spiritual discernment into a defensive shield.

Leaders present this defensive posture as biblically mandated spiritual preparation. The justification draws on authentic scriptural themes, making it difficult to challenge.

  • Persecution as Validation: Citing passages like Matthew 5:11 to reframe all criticism as religious persecution, collapsing the distinction between valid feedback and hostile opposition.
  • Cosmic Conflict Framework: Referencing Ephesians 6:12 to suggest that significant resistance always has supernatural origins, deflecting from human accountability.
  • Pastoral Protection: Positioning this teaching as responsible shepherding—warning the community to be spiritually vigilant and discerning.
  • Biblical Precedent: Drawing parallels to stories of opposition in scripture (like Acts 13) to establish a pattern where resistance to the leader’s vision equals spiritual warfare.

The biblical foundation appears sound, but the application lacks nuance—it’s wielded as a blanket defence rather than one tool among many for understanding conflict.

⚙️ The Underlying Mechanism

This describes the psychological architecture designed to protect leadership from scrutiny.

  • 🧠 Creates False Binaries: Reduces complex situations to loyalty tests—you’re either with the leader or against them. Nuanced, good-faith disagreement becomes impossible.
  • 🛡️ Bypasses Due Process: Redirects attention from “Is this true?” to “Who’s behind this?” Investigation stops at source assessment rather than examining substance.
  • 💥 Escalates Stakes: Transforms routine disagreements into cosmic battles, making it emotionally and spiritually costly to voice concerns.
  • 🪞 Cultivates Siege Mentality: Reinforces the group’s identity as embattled truth-bearers, strengthening internal cohesion while deepening suspicion of outsiders.

🌪️ The Ripple Effect

These dynamics produce consistent patterns in communities and individuals.

  • 🚫 Erodes Discernment: Members lose confidence in their own judgement , unable to distinguish between spiritual attack, human error, and prophetic correction.
  • 🗣️ Suppresses Internal Feedback: People with legitimate concerns stay silent to avoid being labeled divisive or spiritually compromised.
  • ⛓️ Enforces Isolation: Creates deep suspicion of anyone outside the system—including former members and other faith communities—blocking access to outside perspective.
  • 🔥 Reframes Consequences: When leaders face accountability, it’s interpreted as expected spiritual warfare, paradoxically validating them rather than prompting reflection.
  • 😵‍💫 Generates Chronic Doubt: Members become unable to trust their own thoughts. Is this concern legitimate, or is it temptation? This uncertainty increases dependence on leadership for guidance.

In Leadership Behaviour:

  • Selective Application: The “spiritual warfare” diagnosis consistently applies to challenges regarding authority, finances, or reputation—but rarely to the leader’s own failings.
  • Default Attribution: Conflict or failure is reflexively attributed to supernatural opposition rather than considering human factors, poor judgement , or reasonable disagreement.
  • Preemptive Framing: Regular warnings about impending spiritual opposition before any actual challenge has emerged.
  • Character Assassination: Former members raising concerns are dismissed as bitter or deceived rather than having their claims addressed on merit.

In Community Culture:

  • Reflexive assumption that negativity—internal or external—must have supernatural origins.
  • Testimonies frequently centre on overcoming “opposition” from family, friends, or previous communities who “didn’t understand.”
  • Strong “remnant” identity where the group sees itself as uniquely aligned with truth against widespread deception.
  • Palpable hesitation to express doubt or ask probing questions due to fear of being seen as spiritually weak or influenced by darkness.

If You’re Convinced:

  • A sense of clarity and mission; you feel positioned on the front lines of something cosmically significant.
  • Feeling validated in your commitment, especially when facing criticism—it confirms you’re on the right path.
  • Natural suspicion toward anyone questioning the leader or community.
  • Actively rejecting your own doubts as spiritual interference that must be resisted.

If You’re Starting to Question:

  • Intense cognitive dissonance. Raising concerns feels like betrayal, even when they seem reasonable.
  • Deep confusion: The criticism makes logical sense, but accepting it feels spiritually dangerous.
  • Profound isolation—you cannot voice concerns without risking being seen as compromised.
  • Fear of becoming what you’ve been taught to avoid: someone who “fell away” or “couldn’t handle the truth.”
  • Clinical Terms: Pre-emptive framing, thought-stopping cliché, loaded language, genetic fallacy.
  • Cult Research: Milieu control, ideological totalism, phobia indoctrination.
  • Survivor Language: “Spiritualising everything”, “demonising dissent”, “persecution card”, “circling the wagons”
  • Describing resistance to organisational change as “spiritual battle with dark forces.”
  • Preemptively framing anticipated difficulties (illness, logistical problems) as “demonic challenges.”
  • Explicitly labeling personal doubt as “demon talk” and friend’s concerns as darkness speaking through them.

Common Variations:

  • “Before I share this vision, know that there will be immediate attempts to create doubt and division.”
  • “Your family might not understand what happened here. Don’t let that steal what God has done.”
  • “Our impact means we should expect significant spiritual pushback.”

What Healthy Spiritual Leadership Looks Like:

  • Self-Examination First: Leaders model the practice of examining their own hearts before attributing conflict to external sources (Matthew 7:3-5).
  • Accountability as Gift: Correction is recognised as potentially beneficial for growth and protection (Proverbs 27:17). Healthy communities have established channels for feedback.
  • Diagnostic Nuance: Leaders distinguish between external opposition, human error, natural consequences, and simple disagreement. Problems aren’t reduced to a single explanation.
  • Teaching Balanced Discernment: Members learn to evaluate truth carefully, including the ability to receive difficult feedback—not just to filter out criticism.

Biblical Examples:

  • Nathan confronting David (2 Samuel 12)—a direct internal challenge that came from God, not opposition.
  • The Bereans being commended for testing Paul’s teaching against scripture (Acts 17:11).
  • The Jerusalem Council (Acts 15), where leaders engaged in open debate on contentious issues rather than dismissing opposing views.

If You’re Currently Experiencing This:

  • Remember that truth welcomes questions. Systems that must discredit all criticism often operate from fear rather than confidence.
  • Practice alternative questions: “What if this isn’t opposition? What else could be true?” This helps break binary thinking patterns.
  • Notice patterns: Is every challenge filtered this way? Healthy systems can acknowledge mistakes; unhealthy ones externalise all problems.
  • Seek perspective from mature, trusted people outside the system who can offer objective input.

If You’ve Left a System Like This:

  • Residual anxiety or hypervigilance about spiritual matters is common. Healing takes time—be patient with yourself.
  • Rebuilding trust in your own judgement is essential. Your doubts likely indicated healthy discernment, not spiritual failure.
  • Naming the pattern helps reduce its power. Recognising it as a defensive technique rather than spiritual truth is liberating.
  • Healthy relationships include accountability and dialogue—these are features, not threats.

Supporting Others:

  • Validate their confusion and anxiety. This mindset is genuinely powerful and disorienting.
  • Avoid attacking their leader directly. Instead, ask questions that encourage critical thinking: “How would someone distinguish between opposition and helpful feedback?” or “Can good people ever have legitimate concerns?”
  • Introduce examples of healthy leadership where mistakes are acknowledged and questions are welcome.

Conclusion - Bringing It All Together

The Core Dynamic

The Substitute

Strategic Function: Serves as the central operating system for the entire high-control environment. It systematically redirects a follower’s source of imitation from Christ to a human leader, making the leader’s life, teachings, and approval the ultimate measure of spiritual maturity and intercepting the individual’s direct relationship with God.

Definition

A form of discipleship where the individual’s primary source of imitation is subtly and systematically shifted from emulating Christ to emulating a human leader. In this “man-in-the-middle” dynamic, the leader’s life, teachings, and approval become the unstated measure of spiritual maturity, effectively intercepting the disciple’s direct relationship with God.

This is not a single technique but the central operating system that all the other techniques in this toolkit are designed to build and protect.

A system for “Following the Misleader” is built by combining the techniques from the three phases of the toolkit. They work together to create a self-reinforcing loop of control and dependency.

  • Phase 1 (Recruitment & Filtering) builds the foundation. Techniques like Compliance Gates and Boundary Erosion select for individuals who are predisposed to follow a strong leader, while filtering out those with strong independent discernment. This creates a compliant inner circle that forms the system’s base.
  • Phase 2 (Indoctrination & Control) creates the dependency. Techniques like Discernment Hijacking replace a follower’s personal connection to God with a group-mediated process. Engineered Vulnerability creates a trauma-based bond to the leader, making them appear as the sole source of comfort and rescue. This makes the follower reliant on the misleader for their spiritual and emotional stability.
  • Phase 3 (Defending the System) protects the structure. Techniques like Poisoning the Well and Gift Suppression neutralise all internal and external criticism, framing dissent as spiritual immaturity or demonic attack. This insulates the misleader from accountability and ensures the system can perpetuate itself.

When these techniques successfully combine, they create a totalising spiritual environment where the leader becomes the functional mediator of all divine truth and spiritual reality. This is not a metaphor—it describes the actual, lived experience of someone fully embedded in this system.

The leader’s voice becomes the clearest channel for God’s voice. Scripture is read through the leader’s interpretive framework. Their teachings provide the hermeneutical key that unlocks biblical meaning. Attempting to read the Bible independently feels disorienting, even spiritually dangerous, because you’ve been trained that mature interpretation requires the system’s tools and language.

The leader’s process becomes the pathway to God’s will. Personal conviction must be validated through the group-mediated discernment system. Direct prayer and personal reflection are devalued as insufficient or even arrogant. You cannot trust that you’ve truly heard from God until the leader or their process confirms it. Your conscience becomes an unreliable narrator; the system is the reliable one.

The leader’s assessment becomes the measure of your spiritual state. Your sense of maturity, faithfulness, and even your identity as a believer are determined by how well you align with the leader’s definitions and expectations. The spiritual typologies and stages aren’t just helpful categories—they become the lens through which you understand yourself and others. You are what the system says you are.

The leader’s vision becomes the organising principle of your life. Your relationships, your schedule, your career decisions, your family structure—all are evaluated against whether they serve or hinder the leader’s mission. Personal goals that don’t align with the vision feel selfish or immature. The boundaries that once protected your private life have been reframed as obstacles to true discipleship.

The leader’s approval becomes the source of your security. You’ve been through the destabilising cycle of challenge and rescue enough times that the leader has become not just your spiritual guide but your emotional regulator. Their affirmation feels like oxygen; their disappointment feels like suffocation. You’ve lost confidence in your ability to navigate life’s challenges without their intervention.

The leader’s narrative becomes your explanatory framework. When you experience doubt, it’s “the enemy.” When others criticise, they’re “not people of peace” or “speaking from D1 incompetence.” When you feel exhausted, you’re “in D2” and need to push through. The system has provided you with a complete vocabulary that explains every experience—but every explanation routes back to the leader’s authority and the system’s validity.

This is the lived reality: a closed interpretive loop where every road leads back to the leader. You may still use the language of following Christ, but functionally, you are following the leader’s version of Christ, accessed through the leader’s methods, validated by the leader’s community, and measured by the leader’s standards.

The system has become invisible to you—not because it’s subtle, but because it has become your entire way of seeing.

This lived reality rests on a fundamental theological error. The system justifies itself using the language of discipleship, mission, and community. However, it is founded on a fundamental theological error: the replacement of the divine mediator with a human one.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in Life Together, provides a powerful framework for identifying this error. He distinguishes between a healthy Christian community as a “spiritual reality” founded on Christ alone, versus an unhealthy “human reality” built on a leader’s personality and ideals. His words expose the core dysfunction:

On Mediation:

❌ The System’s Error: It teaches that true spiritual access comes through the leader’s process and approval.

✅ Bonhoeffer’s Corrective: “A Christian comes to others only through Jesus Christ… Only in Jesus Christ are we one, only through him are we bound together. To eternity he remains the one Mediator.”

On Formation:

❌ The System’s Error: It demands you conform to the leader’s image of what you should be.

✅ Bonhoeffer’s Corrective: “God does not want me to shape others in my image but made them in His… I cannot know beforehand how God’s image appears in others.”

On Authority:

❌ The System’s Error: It creates a “cult of personality” around a “brilliant” or “authoritative” figure.

✅ Bonhoeffer’s Corrective: “The Church does not need brilliant personalities but faithful servants of Jesus and the brethren… Pastoral authority is attained only by the servant of Jesus who seeks no power of his own.”

Living within this dynamic, whether briefly or for years, exacts a heavy toll on spiritual and emotional health. While it may feel purposeful and intense at first, the long-term consequences often include:

  • Loss of Spiritual Agency: Diminished confidence in your ability to hear from God, read the Bible, or make wise decisions without the leader’s validation.
  • A Distorted View of God: Beginning to see God through the lens of the misleader’s personality—often as demanding, unpredictable, or performance-based rather than gracious.
  • Chronic Burnout and Exhaustion: The constant pressure to perform, serve the leader’s vision, and manage the system’s emotional intensity is unsustainable.
  • Damaged Identity: The erosion of personal boundaries leads to loss of self, where your own goals, desires, and personality become subsumed by the group’s agenda.
  • Relational Fractures: Breakdown of relationships with family and friends outside the system, often framed as necessary for spiritual growth but resulting in painful isolation.
  • Difficulty Trusting Again: After leaving, it becomes incredibly difficult to trust other spiritual leaders or communities, creating a season of protective distance from organised faith.
  • Lasting Trauma: The experience of spiritual manipulation and control can produce psychological wounds that require time and often professional help to heal.

Healing from a controlling system often requires the painful and courageous step of leaving a specific community. The long-term antidote, however, is not to embrace isolation, but to rediscover what a truly Christ-centred community, founded on the reality of God’s grace, can be. Bonhoeffer describes this healthy alternative as being built on simple, humble acts of service:

  • The Ministry of Listening: Where the first act of love is to truly hear your brother or sister, not to immediately “fix” or process them.
  • The Ministry of Bearing: Where members patiently carry one another’s burdens, weaknesses, and oddities, recognising that this “is the law of Christ”.
  • The Ministry of Humility: Where no one thinks of themselves “more highly than he ought to think”, and authority is expressed in service, not dominance.
  • Freedom Under the Word: Where the goal is not “subjection, dependence, constraint,” but the “freedom of the brethren under the Word”.

As you move forward, you can use these questions as a filter to evaluate any community, helping you to identify a healthy environment and avoid the patterns of a misleader.

  • Accountability: Who holds the leader accountable? Is it a hand-picked inner circle, or is there a truly independent body with genuine authority?
  • Questions: How are sincere questions, doubts, or disagreements handled? Are they welcomed as an opportunity for growth, or are they framed as rebellion, immaturity, or a lack of faith?
  • Access: Is access to the leader or to deeper community involvement conditional on performance and compliance, or is it based on grace and mutual fellowship?
  • Christ: Where is Jesus in the community’s power structure? Is he the functional Head, or has the leader’s vision and personality taken his place?
  • Exit: How are former members spoken of? Are they honoured and blessed, or are they labeled as bitter, deceived, or failures?

If you recognise your own story in this dynamic, please know there is a clear path toward healing and freedom.

  • Trust Your Discernment: Acknowledge that the unease and confusion you felt were likely signs of a healthy spirit resisting an unhealthy system.
  • Re-establish a Direct Connection: Give yourself permission to pray, read Scripture, and listen for God’s voice on your own, without an intermediary. Relearning to trust this connection is a vital first step.
  • Seek Safe Community: Find mature, gentle believers outside the system who can offer perspective, support, and a model of healthy relationships without a hidden agenda.
  • Get Professional Help if Needed: A therapist who understands spiritual abuse can be an invaluable guide in untangling the emotional and psychological knots left by these systems.
  • Be Patient with Yourself: Healing from this kind of experience is a process. Give yourself grace as you grieve the losses and slowly rebuild your confidence in God, in community, and in yourself.

Comments

Thank you for joining the conversation. This space is intended to be a place for support, clarification, and shared understanding for those who have been impacted by high-control spiritual environments. To help create a safe and constructive dialogue, please consider the following guidelines:

  • Pseudonym Friendly. You are encouraged to use a pseudonym to protect your identity. If you do, please try to use it consistently across your comments to help with conversational flow. Avoid sharing personally identifying details like specific locations, workplaces, or the full names of non-public figures. Your safety is the priority.
  • Offer Support, Not Unsolicited Advice. Simple words of validation like, "Thank you for sharing," or "That sounds very familiar," can be powerful. Please respect that everyone's journey is unique. Refrain from telling others what they should do or should have done.
  • Prioritise Your Well-being. Engaging with this topic can be emotionally demanding. It is okay to step away from the conversation if you feel overwhelmed. You are not obligated to answer questions or respond to every comment. Please pace yourself and prioritise your own mental and emotional health. If you're not 100% comfortable with the topic, please don't feel obligated to comment. This post will still be here tomorrow.
  • Engage with Grace. Everyone is at a different stage of healing and understanding. It is possible to disagree with an idea respectfully, but personal attacks, invalidation of others' experiences, or shaming language will not be tolerated. Let's aim to make this a space of mutual respect.
Daniel Caerwyn avatar

About Daniel Caerwyn

Daniel Caerwyn is a pseudonym – an investigative writer exploring systemic causes of organisational dysfunction. He writes with commitment to the Church and compassion for those within it.

Expertise:

Spiritual Abuse High-Control Systems Leadership Dynamics Safeguarding Ecclesial Reform